In recent years, energy consumption has drastically increased, due in part to increased industrial development throughout the world. The increased energy consumption has strained natural resources, such as fossil fuels, as well as global capacity to handle the byproducts of consuming these resources. Moreover, future demands for energy are expected in greatly increase, as populations increase and developing nations demand more energy. These factors necessitate the development of new and clean energy sources that are economical, efficient, and have minimal impact on the global environment.
Photovoltaic cells have been used since the 1970s as an alternative to traditional energy sources. Because photovoltaic cells use existing energy from sunlight, the environmental impact from photovoltaic energy generation is significantly less than traditional energy generation. Most of the commercialized photovoltaic cells are inorganic solar cells using single crystal silicon, polycrystal silicon or amorphous silicon. Traditionally, solar modules made from silicon are installed on rooftops of buildings. However, these inorganic silicon-based photovoltaic cells are produced in complicated processes and at high costs, limiting the use of photovoltaic cells. These silicon wafer-based cells are brittle, opaque substances that limit their use, such as on window technology where transparency is a key issue. Further, installation is an issue since these solar modules are heavy and brittle. In addition, installation locations, such as rooftops, are limited compared to the window area in normal buildings, and even less in skyscrapers. To solve such drawbacks, photovoltaics cell using organic materials have been actively researched.
The photovoltaic process in OPV first starts from the absorption of light mainly by the polymer, followed by the formation of excitons. The exciton then migrates to and dissociates at the interface of donor (polymer)/acceptor (fullerene). Separated electrons and holes travel to opposite electrodes via hopping, and are collected at the electrodes, resulting in an open circuit voltage (Voc). Upon connection of electrodes, a photocurrent (short circuit current, Isc) is created.
Organic photovoltaic cells based on π-conjugated polymers have been intensively studied following the discovery of fast charge transfer between polymer and carbon C60. Conventional organic photovoltaic devices use transparent substrates, such as an indium oxide like indium tin oxide (ITO) or IZO, as an anode and aluminum or other metal as a cathode. A photoactive material including an electron donor material and an electron acceptor material is sandwiched between the anode and the cathode. The donor material in conventional devices is poly-3-hexylthiophene (P3HT), which is a conjugated polymer. The conventional acceptor material is (6,6)-phenyl C61 butyric acid methylester (PCBM), which is a fullerene derivative. Both the ITO and aluminum contacts use sputtering and thermal vapor deposition, both of which are expensive, high vacuum, technologies. In these photovoltaic cells, light is typically incident on a side of the substrate requiring a transparent substrate and a transparent electrode. However, this limits the materials that may be selected for the substrate and electrode. Further, a minimum thickness of 30 to 500 nm is needed to increase conductivity. Moreover, the organic photoelectric conversion layer is sensitive to oxygen and moisture, which reduce the power conversion efficiency and the life cycle of the organic solar cell. Development of organic photovoltaic cells, has achieved a conversion efficiency of 3.6% (Peumans & Forrest, Very-high-efficiency double-heterostructure copper phthalocyanine/C60 photovoltaic cells. Appl. Phys. Lett. 2001; 79(1):126-9).
These polymeric OPVs hold promise for potential cost-effective photovoltaics since it is solution-processable. Large area OPVs have been demonstrated using printing (Krebs and Norrman, Using light-induced thermocleavage in a roll-to-roll process for polymer solar cells, ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces. 2010; 2(3):877-887; Krebs, et al., A roll-to-roll process to flexible polymer solar cells: model studies, manufacture and operational stability studies, J. Mater. Chem. August 2009; 19(30):5442-5451; Krebs, et al., Large area plastic solar cell modules, Mater. Sci. Eng. B. 25 March 2007; 138(2):106-111; Steim, et al., Flexible polymer Photovoltaic modules with incorporated organic bypass diodes to address module shading effects, Sol. Energy Mater. Sol. Cells. November 2009; 93(11):1963-1967; Blankenburg, et al., Reel to reel wet coating as an efficient up-scaling technique for the production of bulk heterojunction polymer solar cells, Sol. Energy Mater. Sol. Cells. April 2009; 93(4): 476-483), spin-coating and laser scribing (Niggemann, et al., Organic solar cell modules for specific applications—from energy autonomous systems to large area photovoltaics, Thin Solid Films 30 Aug. 2008; 516(20):7181-7187; Tipnis, et al., Large-area organic photovoltaic module—fabrication and performance, Sol. Energy Mater. Sol. Cells. April 2009; 93(4):442-446; Lungenschmied, et al., Flexible, long-lived, large-area, organic solar cells, Sol. Energy Mater. Sol. Cells 91 (2007) 379-384), and roller painting (Jung and Jo, Annealing-free high efficiency and large area polymer solar cells fabricated by a roller painting process, Adv. Func. Mater. 20 (2010) 2355-2363). ITO, a transparent conductor, is commonly used as a hole collecting electrode (anode) in OPV, and a normal geometry OPV starts from the ITO anode, with the electron accepting electrode (cathode) usually a low work function metal such as aluminum or calcium, being added via thermal evaporation process.
In addition, to improve efficiency of the organic thin film solar cell, photoactive layers were developed using a low-molecular weight organic material, with the layers stacked and functions separated by layer. (Peumans, et al., Efficient photon harvesting at high optical intensities in ultrathin organic double-heterostructure photovoltaic diodes, Appl. Phys. Lett. 2000; 76(19):2650-2652). Alternatively, the photoactive layers were stacked with a metal layer of about 0.5 to 5 nm interposed to double the open end voltage (Voc). (Yakimov & Forrest, High photovoltage multiple-heterojunction organic solar cells incorporating interfacial metallic nanoclusters, Appl. Phys. Lett. 2002; 80(9):1667-1669). As described above, stacking of photoactive layer is one of the most effective techniques for improving efficiency of the organic thin film solar cell. However, stacking photoactive layers can cause layers to melt due to solvent formation from the different layers. Stacking also limits the transparency of the photovoltaic. Interposing a metal layer between the photoactive layers can prevent solvent from one photoactive layer from penetrating into another photoactive layer and preventing damage to the other photoactive layer. However, the metal layer also reduces light transmittance, affecting power conversion efficiency of the photovoltaic cell.
In order for solar cells to be compatible with windows, issues with the transparency of the photovoltaic must first be addressed. The metal contacts used in traditional solar modules are visibility-blocking and must be replaced. Another challenge is to reduce cost for large scale manufacturing in order for organic solar cells to be commercially viable, a much lower manufacturing cost to compensate for the lower efficiency than current photovoltaic products. For example, a solution-based all-spray device, which was opaque, showed a PCE as high as 0.42% (Lim, et al., Spray-deposited poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) top electrode for organic solar cells, Appl. Phys. Lett. 2008; 93(19):193301-193304). Large-scale manufacturing techniques, such as printing, have lowered the cost of manufacture, but still involve the use of metal in certain way, and therefore affect the transparency of the photovoltaic cell.
Therefore, what is needed is a new method of manufacturing organic photovoltaic cells without the use of metal, to allow for novel photovoltaic cells with enhanced transparency, and with minimal human involvement transparency and visual effect of solar window to reduce variation and damage during manufacturing. The art at the time the present invention was made did not describe how to attain these goals, of manufacturing less expensive and less complex devices, having enhanced transparency.